Ausweis Ausweis A Reality-Hacking Experiment. The world's changing. We're getting so concerned with the descriptions and symbols that represent ideas, we're losing all contact with the substance. On a tape I bought at a yard sale, I heard the narrator say, "People are conditioned to believe the printed word." You know I really thought that people would laugh and not let me get anywhere with them. But success came really quickly. My next big success came with the "50 Cents Off" card. What was it that compelled him? Of course, there's the story of the artist who paints replicas of U.S. currency to prove some of the same point. I started to get obsessed with how abstract and far-reaching I could make the words on the card...could they really overcome physical limitations? And why do these cards make everyone smile? I made the "Add To Your Family Card," after I realized most of the previous ones were rather masculine. A little further in the "far-reaching" direction... Another powermad one. poof! Links
Cool Abandoned Places In The World 8 - Glorious Mind Posted by admin on 10 Dec 2012 / 2 Comments Cool Abandoned Places In The World -Part 8 :Varosha In the early 1970’s, the Varosha quarter in Famagusta, Cyprus was one of the Mediterranean’s most popular and glamorous tourist destinations. The island of Cyprus has been the subject of a constant tug-of-war battle between Greece and Turkey for centuries. Homes still have closets full of clothes, cabinets full of dishes, and there is even a car dealership still stocked with ‘brand new’ 1974 model-year cars. So why is the area still barricaded and patrolled by Turkish troops? Until Turkey relinquishes Varosha, it will continue to be battered by the elements and slowly crumble over time. Varosha in its heyday:
Apocalyptic Detailed Models By Daily Mail Reporter Published: 15:23 GMT, 3 April 2012 | Updated: 18:18 GMT, 3 April 2012 These amazing models give an eerie glimpse into the end of the world. Artist Lori Nix spends weeks painstakingly constructing the incredible sculptures, which show what everyday places might look like after the apocalypse. Ms Nix, from Brooklyn, New York, has devoted her whole apartment to making the doll's house size models with bits and pieces of post-apocalyptic destruction littering every room. She said: 'Every room in my apartment is devoted to the process of building models and photographing them. 'I have a couple of power saws sitting on and under the kitchen table, more power tools in the equipment room and a living room full of work tables and lots of debris. 'I work on these models at night, on the weekends and whenever we have days off from my regular job as a professional photographer. 'It takes about seven months to complete a diorama, but I'm working on two to three at a time.
A Brief History of Snow Globes The way Erwin Perzy's family tells it, if Thomas Edison had designed a better light bulb, Perzy would never have invented the snow globe. Back in 1900, Erwin Perzy I was working in Vienna as a fine instruments mechanic when a surgeon came to him with a problem. Although the surgeon had electric light bulbs installed in his operating theater, the newly invented product didn't cast great light. He wanted to know if Perzy could improve on the dim bulbs and make them brighter. So he got to work. As Perzy hunted for inspiration, he noticed that shoemakers had stumbled into an interesting trick: By filling glass globes with water and placing them in front of candles, they created tiny spotlights in their shops. When Perzy tried the trick with a lightbulb, he discovered the brightness wasn't improved. Inspiration struck: What if he used his technical expertise to create a tiny diorama in his snowy little world? At least, that's the story Austrians like to peddle.
Ghost Quiz In 1885, Cecilia Garrett Smith and a friend were experimenting with automatic writing using a primitive Ouija board on which a planchette was guided by a visiting “spirit.” “We got all sorts of nonsense out of it, sometimes long doggerel rhymes with several verses,” but the prophecies they asked for were rarely answered. When they asked who the guiding spirit was, the planchette wrote that his name was Jim and that he had been Senior Wrangler at Cambridge. Intrigued, they asked Jim to write the equation describing the heart-shaped planchette they were using, and they received this response: This they interpreted as , which J.W. “I am quite sure that I had never seen the curve before, and therefore the production of the equation could not have been an act of unconscious memory on my part,” Smith wrote later. One wonders what Jim thought of all this.
A 1970's teenager's bedroom - Not concerned with Medicare or other adult things my bedroom was filled with stereo equipment Updated 05 Sep 2012 Introduction: This page shows some of the evolution of my stereo system and involvement with electronics as a teenager in the mid 1970s. Why this page? At work and in related travels, I often get questioned as to how I got started in electronics. A shot of the corner of my bedroom with the stereo system from July 1976. A photo of my newly upgraded speaker system. Another view of the system corner, this image is from late 1976. January 1977. Another view from early 1977. March 1977. December 1976. May 1977. June 1977. 1977 photo. October 1977. October 1977. A view looking under the shelf to show some of the mass of wiring that made up the "bugging system". Another view of the wiring mass under the shelf. Late 1977, a 40 channel Royce CB radio (and 12 VDC power supply) has been added to the system. A wider angle shot from late 1977/early 1978. February 1978. March 1978. My first FM antenna, March 1978. May 1978. December 1978. January 1979. June 1979. October 1980. So....
How to Get a Copy of Your FBI File (idea) by narzos The Freedom of Information Act is a powerful thing. If you've ever wanted to know just what those guvmint bastards have on you, anyway, here's your chance. Just fill in the italics in this form letter with the appropriate information, get your signature notarized, send it off, and you're in business! This should be free, though if your search returns reams of information, you may be charged 5 cents per page in duplication fees. The law says that your request must be responded to within 10 days, but you can expect something closer to 2 or 3 months for a definitive answer with the current backlog of paperwork. Your Name Today's Date Your Address Line 2 of Your Address Federal Bureau of Investigation Records Resources Division - Attn.: FOIA/PA Office J. This is a request for records under both the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act. My full name is: Your Name. I hereby agree to pay reasonable costs associated with this request up to a maximum of $30. Sincerely,Your Signature
8 Artists Who Poured Their Heart and Soul Into Their Work (Also: Their Blood and Urine) All artists put a little bit of their soul into every piece. But these artists put their soul – and a whole lot more – into their art. 1. Hair and Nails When Hananuma Masakichi learned he was dying of tuberculosis, he wanted to give his girlfriend a way to remember him. During the construction, Masakichi even sacrificed pieces of his own body to help his wooden doppelganger come to life. Masakichi finished his statue in 1885 and put it on display. When Robert Ripley began collecting the world's oddities in the 1930s, Masakichi's statue was one of the first items he acquired, paying a San Francisco saloon-owner $10 for it. 2. Van Gogh painted some famous self-portraits. The first Self was purchased by one of the Britart movement's biggest early supporters, Charles Saatchi, who paid £13,000 for it. 3. All artists suffer for their art, but Lani Beloso has made her suffering into art instead. 4. Few pieces of art have evoked emotions like Andres Serrano's 1987 Immersion (Piss Christ) . 5.
Image evolution What is this? A simulated annealing like optimization algorithm, a reimplementation of Roger Alsing's excellent idea. The goal is to get an image represented as a collection of overlapping polygons of various colors and transparencies. We start from random 50 polygons that are invisible. Fitness is a sum of pixel-by-pixel differences from the original image. This implementation is based on Roger Alsing's description, though not on his code. How does it look after some time? 50 polygons (4-vertex) ~15 minutes 644 benefitial mutations 6,120 candidates 88.74% fitness 50 polygons (6-vertex) ~15 minutes 646 benefitial mutations 6,024 candidates 89.04% fitness 50 polygons (10-vertex) ~15 minutes 645 benefitial mutations 5,367 candidates 87.01% fitness 50 polygons (6-vertex) ~45 minutes 1,476 benefitial mutations 23,694 candidates 93.35% fitness 50 polygons (6-vertex) ~60 minutes 1,595 benefitial mutations 28,888 candidates 93.46% fitness Does it work on all images? It depends, success varies.
Maps home page Down to: 6th to 15th Centuries | 16th and 19th Centuries | 1901 to World War Two | 1946 to 21st Century The Ancient World ... index of places Aegean Region, to 300 BCE Aegean Region, 185 BCE Africa, 2500 to 1500 BCE Africa to 500 CE African Language Families Alexander in the East (334 to 323 BCE) Ashoka, Empire of (269 to 232 BCE) Athenian Empire (431 BCE) China, Korea and Japan (1st to 5th century CE) China's Warring States (245 to 235 BCE) Cyrus II, Empire of (559 to 530 BCE) Delian League, 431 BCE Egyptian and Hittite Empires, 1279 BCE Europe Fertile Crescent, 9000-4500 BCE Germania (120 CE) Greece (600s to 400s BCE) Gupta Empire (320 to 550 CE) Han China, circa 100 BCE Hellespont (Battle of Granicus River, 334 BCE) India to 500 BCE Israel and Judah to 733 BCE Italy and Sicily (400 to 200 BCE) Judea, Galilee, Idumea (1st Century BCE) Mesopotamia to 2500 BCE Mesoamerica and the Maya (250 to 500 CE) Oceania Power divisions across Eurasia, 301 BCE Roman Empire, CE 12 Roman Empire, CE 150 Roman Empire, CE 500
Most Interesting Libraries of the World The Royal library Black Diamond at the waterfront of Copenhagen owes its name to the black granite from Zimbabwe used for the facade of the building. The name was used by the public first and has been adapted officially later. Design by the Danish architects Schmidt, Hammer & Lassen. Photography by Mirage Bookmark Flickr.com